SO WHAT IF THE INTERNET HAS TURNED EACH DAY INTO A PANIC-RIDDEN INFORMATIONAL HOT-DOG-EATING CONTEST?

And I do, I spend enormous, unjustifiable amounts of time simply gorging on information. The worst of it is that I seem to need more and more, but the equipment I am using is too slow, it’s positively lumbering. No way can my head handle the rate at which I am trying to shove stuff in; the evidence of that is conclusive. I can never remember how to spell Aung San Suu Kyi. A Canadian friend ribs me for knowing so little about the Harper government. I still haven’t read today’s newsletters from Salon, japantoday.com, or The New Yorker. The books in this house are evidently multiplying on their own. It takes me forever to read even a newspaper article in Spanish, let alone Roberto Bolaño like I’m supposed to be doing.

--Maria Bustillos, In Praise of High-Speed Overload